Physician, Heal Thyself! A Review of Amy Tan's, "The Bonesetter's Daughter"

Amy Tan continues to mesmerize me with her tales. Few mother and daughter relationships are all tea parties and Easy Bake Ovens. They are hard work requiring excavation of the heart and soul. Especially fraught with intensity are those where mothers want their daughters to escape the problems they, themselves suffered as daughters.

In her book, “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” Tan explores another mother and daughter who must learn from the mysteries and secrets of the past in order to move on to the future.

The mother LuLing has lived nearly an entire life in China before escaping to America after World War II. That lifetime included being raised in a village’s prominent family with her own nursemaid, to being discarded as an orphan when her true parentage is revealed. When she begins again in San Francisco, the curses of her former life seem to have followed her as shortly after marrying and bringing Ruth into the world, a truck smacks into her husband and takes him out of the world.

The daughter Ruth lives her life afraid of accepting her own wants and desires because of the affect on her of her mother’s fears, superstitions, and old world customs. As a writer she becomes a “shadow artist,” afraid to use her own talent for herself, she ghostwrites books for subject matter experts, translating their thoughts into books.

When Ruth realizes that she has metaphorically ghostwritten her mother’s thoughts, translating them into her own life, she begins to knit the bones of her life or “her character” into wholeness.

Tan gives us many layers of meaning in “The Bonesetter’s Daughter.” From the meanings of Chinese characters or words we learn the true character or nature of the Chinese women involved.

Ruth begins to learn her mother’s truths when her mother hands her a calligraphic story of her life, then sets it aside to translate when she has time. Unfortunately, time and her mother’s memories both begin to run out as Alzheimer’s takes over this frail little woman who has strengthened Ruth all her life. As the roles of mother and daughter blend and blur, the truth comes sharply into focus.

This rich embroider of story is truly like a tapestry where you admire the threads and picture told on one side and then flip the fabric to see the different story told by the same threads.

There is a peace I feel when I finish one of Tan’s books. “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” was no exception. I closed the book, glad to have met and learned from the characters within.